How long has the Sole Proprietor lived on the Berkeley border in Oakland just off Telegraph and not found a decent (by his lights) place for breakfast? Rockridge is mostly hopeless for Sole Proprietors. There are breakfast places and they are filled with people having same, but none of them were designed with a Sole Proprietor in mind serving any food on this planet the Sole Proprietor really likes.

Today, however, he tried another restaurant on Telegraph near the Berkeley campus. Not too crowded, fairly comfortable tables and chairs, not too many people playing bit parts in their own movies and food that made sense. Read the paper, have some coffee, the camera is up on the table in case someone does something colorful near the restaurant door where the light is good. The name doesn't matter, fill in the name of the place you like. He found a "good" place for breakfast this morning and the Sole Proprietor is happy with the world.

Since he was near some of the record stores, he looked for the Wire "Pink Flag" CD that Rien Post has been talking about in his journal. There was a time when the Sole Proprietor listened to music with something near passion himself so he thought he'd buy the CD and see what Post was talking about. The record store had some Wire CD's but not "Pink Flag" so the Sole Proprietor ordered it later from Amazon.com along with the Dylan Albert Hall concert.

Still on Telegraph he passed Shakespear Books and thought, well, why not see what the photography section has to offer. He noticed a book in the window: Jack Kerouac Angelheaded Hipster by an author named Steve Turner, hard bound and only $10. Hmmm, he thought. He checked out the art books and found one called Weird Rooms, a book describing people in the Bay Area who had turned a room in their house or in some cases their entire house into a kind of eclectic collector's toy-poster-picture-automobile- whatever else museum every corner filled with plastic toys, junk, smiley faces and other necessary stuff along with a brief interview with the collector. He bought 'em both.

The Sole Proprietor is going to put together a list of 100 books that have moved him for whatever reason one of these days (Jim, I'll get to it.) and Kerouac will be on the list. Some of a certain age who read Kerouac when they were young have a place for him somewhere back in their mind's attic. When The Sole Proprietor got out of the Army he and a friend drove down to San Miguel de Allende just north of Mexico City in a Volkswagen bus to hang out, write some books and drink Tequila, choosing the place because Neal Cassady, the model for Kerouac's On The Road character Dean Moriarty, had died there that winter after a hard night's drinking and staggering out into the cold, collapsing alone on some railroad tracks.

So, a good breakfast, a couple of good books (he hopes) and a record on order that may turn out fine put the Sole Proprietor in a good mood. The day was overcast, but he packed a camera, hopped on a bus, went downtown, shot some pictures and took in a movie (Enemy of the State, lots of action and techie stuff. Good for its type.) to kill the afternoon. Nice.

No pictures today. He'll put together something for "This Week's Photographs" tomorrow so he'll probably skip the journal entry and turn in early for a decent night's sleep.